doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

un gros bonjour à tous mes amis du québec que j’ai rencontré lors du Festival de l’Alliance dimanche dernier, à Pointe-du-Lac. C’était un véritable plaisir de retourner vous voir et j’espère que les circonstances de ma vie toujours occupée et non moins mouvementée me permettent de retourner bientôt. À tous mes amis de Trois-Rivières, Drummondville, Victoriaville, Sherbrooke, Thetford Mines, Danville, Québec, Montréal, Longueuil, et partout — vous m’êtes précieux, vous me manquez toujours, vous êtes pour moi comme une grande famille. Je vous aime!

Ça vous dirait de quoi, une conférence des jeunes? Je viens d’apprendre, à travers le 3CJ, que la prochaine conférence des jeunes bahá’ís approche à grands pas, et que celle-ci se tiendra près de mon ancien poste pionnier, dans le Centre-du-Québec, à Saint-Ferdinand. Le thème va être: “Mon engagement dans le service par la foi”. Ça sera du 7 au 9 janvier, 2005, au Domaine Fraser, juste en dehors du village de Saint-Ferdinand. Le domaine est bien connu comme centre équestre et base de plein air, et ils offrent non seulement des glissades sur les côtes impressionnantes de Saint-Ferdinand, mais des promenades en traîneau en plus! Oserez-vous laisser passer cette chance?! Moi non plus… Allez en lire davantage!

In case you’re wondering what I was just talking about, the next Quebec Youth Conference is coming up soon, from january 7-9th, 2005, in Saint-Ferdinand, Quebec — not far from where I was pioneering, in Victoriaville. The theme will be “Mon engagement dans le service par la foi” (My engagement in service through faith). The venue, the Domaine Fraser (Fraser Domain) is well known as an equestrian centre… so does a sleighride through the snow-covered Appalachians sound appealing to you? I thought so. Go read more!

so we’re hanging out at best buy with the crew. I’m sitting here with a wireless keyboard blogging. arash is being beaten with sticks right now for trying to jack an x-box. the guards have tasers and they look like they mean business. this is pretty cool. i’m sitting on a couch looking at a six-foot-wide display. my website is bigger than life. phil just logged in to the local wireless network with his laptop, and jaleh is checking her emails.

Arash writes: “Dan is a little too excited right now…must get away from him”

Thanks, Arash.

I’ve been meeting all sorts of strange people. I think it all started on Tuesday; I found out that the IT guy who sits in the cubicle next to me, Pat, was in my grade when I went to high school at St. Peter’s. Not only that, but he also went to the same junior high school as me. Whoa. Talk about your freaking coincidences.

Then, someone named Trefor (sp?) came up to me during the day on Wednesday and asked me if I was Dan Jones from doberman pizza. I said uhhhhhhhhhhyes. Turns out he’s an avid blog reader, and found my blog by searching for references about the Conference Board. That’s the first time anyone’s ever recognized me from… my blog.

Then today, I was waiting for the bus home after work and saw this guy hanging around who looked suspiciously like one of my old high school friends. I went up to him and asked him if his name was Ben. It was, and suddenly it was OMG I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN SO LONG time. Turns out he was waiting for the same bus I was on, too, and going to the same stop as I was, to visit… Matt, another one of my high school friends. In fact, somehow it turns out that… a bunch of my other high school friends live across the street from me, and hang out together half the week.

This is definitely one of those OMFG weeks…

oh, and TGIF.

finally, a sunny day! it’s nice to look out the window and see some sun instead of a vast expanse of grey. it’s friday, too - nice timing. a perfect end to an up-and-down week. I think I need to cut the coffee, though; I think it’s messing up my nerves.

I moved out of the Publishing department today, and settled into the IT department here at the Conference Board. it’s just a couple of doors down. now that I’ve accepted a contract here, I’ll be working partly on publications (like I was before), and partly on web posting. Everything here revolves around conferences and research publications, of course. so everything I work on is full of buzzwords and deep meaning to business gurus and miscellaneous people with suits. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve worked in an IT-only office; the difference is palpable. IT people are different from publishing people. The atmosphere here seems more laid-back than the high-strung atmosphere in publishing. It goes with the work, of course.

Anyway, I digress. I spent a lot of time making the transition between my new office (read: cubicle) and the old one. I did a lot of what I call “process management” - ie. making my life easier by finding ways to improve the way I do my work. to the untrained eye it looks like goofing around, but it’s not. for instance, I installed Yahoo! messenger (which I generally never use) so that the people in Publishing (who use it a lot) can give me a heads-up when something’s coming down the line. It saves them coming over to bug me for FYI’s. Not that I mind them coming to bug me, though. It’s just cool to see a little note from a co-worker pop up on my screen in a little window in real-time.

so anyway, I’m staying here for at least five months, if not more. I’d better get used to it. I think it’ll be fun. I seem to be tolerating it well so far (except for the coffee thing), and the people are generally friendly and easy to get along with. The work is interesting and varied, and the food’s good. mmmm, hospital food.* I dunno, I like it.

* The Conference Board’s cafeteria is run by the catering division of the Ottawa Hospital, which is just down the street.

forsooth!

I have a job!

I mean, a real one!

damn that’s hot.

a-thank you, a-thank you.

Welcome all ladles and gentlemints to the Lunch Hour Follies with ex-Lion Tamer Dan Jones. It’s a grey day in Ottawa and things are moving very s l o w l y. It’s the right day to feel depressed, if you swing that way. I suppose it’s a good thing that the day is so grey because the evening will be a little more packed than usual. I’m (supposedly) meeting up with Tazz at the University to work on some ULTRA SECRET TOP SECRET NATIONAL SECURITY SECRET DOCUMENTS for CABS, after which there is a Children’s Class Teacher Training session at Lees which I plan to show up to. That’s somewhat interesting. More interesting than sitting around waiting for people to give you stuff. I’m s o o o o o o o o o o o o b o r e d o h m y g o o d n e s s i a m b o r e d

not that every day is like this. some days are like this and some days aren’t. it’s a little unpredictable when you work in publishing, I guess. some days, everybody decides to submit their publication requests all at once, and then you have what we call a publishing glut. that’s when everybody takes some advil and brews an extra pot of coffee, and the printers are booked up until 4 AM. so that’s one extreme. then days like today are the other extreme. oh, here come some jobs. there, I have something to do. good. it’s nice to work. it makes you feel good, and it pays your bills. it’s good for you. it makes you feel good about oatmeal.

come to CABS on friday. Room 205 in the University Centre (a twenty-second walk from the Tim Horton’s). Don’t ask questions. Just come. [NOTE: come *next* friday… this friday there’s no meeting. -dj]

some things that might interest you:

• All of Vafa’s halloween party pictures are up.

• The Ottawa Bahá’í community recently had a celebration to commemorate the Birthday of Bahá’u'lláh. Martin will be posting pictures tomorrow… give them a look!
• It was my Dad’s birthday today. How old is he? “None of your business.” ;)
• I’m still working at the Conference Board of Canada, with no signs of letting up yet… and some signs that they might start getting me to do (gasp!) computer programming!
• The Quebec Bahá’í community’s commemoration of the Day of the Covenant will be in Trois-Rivières, on Sunday, November 28th, beginning at 1 PM sharp. Actually, it’s being held at a day camp to the west of the town (in Pointe-du-Lac). Consider going, and getting to know some Bahá’ís on the other side of the river!

saviez-vous qu’il y a plusieurs webcams qui montrent des différents endroits à travers le Québec? Voici ceux que j’ai trouvé jusqu’ici:

gah! my router’s acting funny. such are computer networks - always getting messed up. all it takes is for something to happen out of sequence, and suddenly your router thinks it’s 1970. I’m running a wireless network, too - first time I’ve tried that. It’s quite convenient. We borrowed a laptop from mom and dad, and we can use it in any room of the house and still have a connection to the internet. of course we’ve had some problems getting the wireless adapter to work, and the network connection is sketchy at best. So there are advantages and disadvantages. I suppose it’s better than the alternative.

Recently, I was appointed to the Baha’i Community’s Sector Management Team for Ottawa’s Sector 9 (Vanier - Overbrook - Cyrville - Beacon Hill). We had a meeting tonight; it was similar to my experiences serving as members of Spiritual Assemblies. It’s basically a mini-Assembly (except that it has a mandate restricted mostly to logistical questions). It was a nice experience; plus, two good friends of mine are also on the team so it’s cool that I get to hang around with them. I’m not sure of much right now (since it’s my first time) but I know that if I want to keep this up I’ll have to re-evaluate some of the things I do. I was comfortable with just a children’s class every two weeks, weekly meetings, some social events, and some work during the week. but this isn’t just one new meeting to go to; it’s all the homework that you take back home. I’m wondering whether I’m able to handle all of that homework right now, and where my limits are. I know that at the beginning of this year I had taken on too much, and I suffered greatly because I was trying to live and work beyond my capacity. So I ended up getting very depressed, up til the point I realized I had to fall back and make a change. So… what I’m hoping now is that I can avoid that last part and just make wise decisions as to how many commitments I take on. Good luck so far, good luck so far. i’ll have to make more time for meditation in my life. I get the feeling I’ll need it.

I’m a month away from being 25. I think it shows… I sound old. ;)

beubeubonjour tout le monde.

ah oui et YA NEIGÉ AUJOURD’HUI… ça a pris du temps mais bon. c’est l’hiver qui approche petit à petit…

hey friends and flashbulbs. another week of work has successfully ended at the Conference Board. It’s been a very interesting experience working here — I’ve learned a lot about graphic design, how to clean up a publication, pre-press, etc. It reminds me of working at The Fulcrum, only everybody has a whole whack more experience.

Big ups to Arash, who posted photos of his recent trip to Montreal — where he met MusiquePlus VJ Chéli Sauvé-Castonguay, and took pictures to prove it. Oh and big ups to MusiquePlus. And big ups to Montreal too.

More later. It’s getting late.

hello dear friends. here are a few timbits of info for your perusal (version française ci-dessous):

• Daylight Saving Time ended at 2 AM EDT, October 31st, 2004. Ever wondered which places in the world don’t use Daylight Saving Time? Hint: Saskatchewan is one of them.

• The Hallowe’en party at Vafa’s place was spectacular. Look for photos soon on his Website. Also, look forward to some photos of my family’s Halloween celebrations in the under-used family scrapbook. Come to think of it… look forward to a whole whack of family photos.
• The Reflection Meeting on Saturday at the Jack Purcell Centre was phat! One of the best I’ve ever been to - and I’m not just saying that because they brought sandwiches straight to our table. Check out the photos on Martin’s website.
• The good people at the Conference Board of Canada have called me back to do some desktop publishing work at their offices on Smyth Rd. tomorrow. Cool! Note that I went in to work at their offices last week, too - they called me in to deal with mountains of work that suddenly came in.
• They’re announcing snow for Sunday. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Salut les amis. Voici une petite collection de faits et méfaits pour vous distraire: